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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2024
Book review by Katherine Mansfield in the Daily News, 28 November 1921, p. 8.
BOOKS & AUTHORS.
FAME AND ADVENTURE.
(By KATHERINE MANSFIELD.)
‘The Secret Victory’. By Stephen McKenna. Hutchinson. 5s. 6d. net. ‘The Red Knight’. By F. Brett Young. Collins. 7s. 6d. net.
This is the story of how Eric Lane, last and most pitiful of all the victims of Lady Barbara Neave, sought to recover his hold on life. The two preceding volumes of Mr. McKenna's trilogy are devoted mainly to Lady Barbara, who is the queen of that little set in London society known as the Sensationalists. She is a siren. To see her button a glove or bite a caviare sandwich was to have a promising career ruined for ever. Her passion – and the passion of her set – was for notoriety. England talked of her, India murmured, Canada took up the refrain. However, her victims, being soulless, recovered. All but Eric Lane. Bruised, broken, his health so shattered that the doctor bluntly hinted at a sanatorium, he left England for ever. For desperate ills desperate remedies. He chose a six months lecturing tour in the United States. After that was over, still seeking oblivion, he was about to disappear into China when a cable from his mother called him home.
Chapter I. tells how, the cynosure of a thousand eyes, he ate his last dinner in New York. Millbank, one time Ambassador in England, wished him, in the name of America, Godspeed. At his elbow stood row upon row of waiters with piled-up menu cards for him to sign. Twenty feet away scribbled the pressmen, and ‘he posed himself and sat patiently still’ while the sketch-artists bent to their task. Then he rose. ‘The applause broke out again, ten times louder and longer than before; there was a blinding flash of silver light… . followed by dense clouds of smoke’. He spoke. ‘There was no applause, for none dared break the silence’. Then ‘the pent storm of cheering gushed forth as though he had touched a spring’.
The Young Playwright.
The trouble is this unfortunate, retiring, broken-hearted young man is a playwright. And Mr. McKenna tells us what that means.
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